Why Exposing Website Trends Leads to E-Commerce Success
If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that retailers need to be flexible and nimble in their e-commerce initiatives to keep website visitors engaged — all while increasing conversions and enhancing the customer experience.
Exposing website trends is a form of social proof that bridges the gap to a new customer experience. According to Analytic Partners, every channel you add can improve your return on investment and effectiveness by up to 35 percent.
Social proof gives customers the comfort they seek when making an online purchase. According to BigCommerce, the more social proof engagement volume, the more likely potential customers will view your brand as a reputable and noteworthy business to purchase from.
Exposing real-time website trends on product detail pages or on a trending wall provides a great sense of urgency without adding clutter or distraction along the customer journey. Website trends highlight exactly what products users are interacting with and converting on in the current moment.
By exposing real-time website trends on your e-commerce site, you're capturing your visitors' curiosity to trends and products they may not have initially come to your website for. This curiosity gives them a reason to dig deep, enticing them to further engage with your products and increase the size of their order.
Real-time website trends aggregate the actions of users on your website. Highlighting added to cart, views, and purchases over the last hour or day contribute to the fear of missing-out-mentality, leading to higher customer engagement and increased conversions.
How to Implement Website Trends
While implementing website trends on your e-commerce site can be done manually, it's not recommended. Keeping the trending information accurate and up-to-date is a time- and resource-intensive project if done manually.
Automating website trends with a reputable solution that automates this process (as trends are ever-changing) will be less taxing on your team, more accurate, and provide automated analytical reporting.
Prior to looking for a solution, determine what metrics you're looking to increase. While increasing sales is a given, are you also trying to increase engagement, time on site, or create a "fear of missing out" mentality? Once you’ve determined what’s important, do some research.
Research Software Solutions
There are several ways to research the different software solutions available:
- Recommendations from other “friends in commerce” or unbiased articles on reputable news and research websites.
- Search for "User-Generated Content Software" or "Social Media Marketing Software" on tech marketplace sites such as G2.com and Capterra.com. This will give you a glimpse of various software solutions all in one place, in distinct categories, many with reviews by current/previous users of the software.
- Perform a Google search for terms such as website trends, social proof, shoppable UGC. Look at some of the ads that appear and results in the search to see what’s available.
Once you’ve identified several solutions, check out their customers. See how their customers are using the solution. Make sure that the website trends, social proof, shoppable user-generated content (UGC) and other features being used on the website will meet your needs from an experience perspective.
Many companies offer free trials, with monthly fees as low as $30/month to get started. Engage with one or two to test out their solution under the free trial. Determine which one produces the best metric results and is the easiest to implement and use.
Tap into the wisdom of the crowd, and let your visitors map out their journey based on other visitors’ activity and trends. This unique journey has proven to increase conversions and sales, while changing in real time.
Mike Matker is co-founder of SiteVibes, a user-generated content and social commerce platform.
